The world is full of places that inspire and bring us joy: they might be exceptionally beautiful, resonant with history, untouched by civilisation or rich in memory. This is an atlas that gathers together some of the most enchanting and reinvigorating places around the world in order to heal and captivate, including beautiful destinations in Greece, Italy, Japan, America, Chile and Australia, to name but a few. We’re taken to the tops of mountains, solitary cliffs, elegant cities and also some less expected locations: airports, hydroelectric stations and meteorite craters. Great travellers have always known that travelling can broaden the mind; here we see how it can also heal it. A Therapeutic Atlas reminds us that the world is far broader and more inspiring than we tend to appreciate day to day. Tempting images are combined with short essays that discuss the power of particular places to help us with the difficulties of being human. We locate places that are therapeutic because they coax us out of familiar patterns of thought and liberate our minds. This is a book that can be read when travelling, as a real-life atlas, but as importantly, when travel is difficult, it reminds us that there is no place like home and the sanctuary of our own bed.

'An exhilarating story of freedom and constraint, told with a confident and unwavering verve. This is a journey driven by boundless curiosity, and by the desire for connection - across borders, across languages, across time' MALACHY TALLACK When Esa Aldegheri and her husband left their home in Orkney, Esa didn't know that their eighteen-month motorbike adventure would take them through twenty international frontiers - between Europe and the Middle East, through Pakistan, China and India - many of which are now impassable. Charting a story of shrinking and expanding liberties and horizons, of motherhood, womanhood, xenophobia and changing geopolitical situations, Free to Go examines the challenges of navigating a world where many assume that women ride pillion, both on a motorbike and within relationships. Part around-the-world adventure, part-literary exploration of womanhood, Free to Go is about the journeys that shape and transform us.

From the seashell-laden shores of Florida’s Sanibel Island to a green sand beach in Hawaii to island oases in French Polynesia, this exquisitely illustrated collection uncovers 100 of the world's best shores and coasts. From the boho surf culture of Australia’s Bondi Beach to Costa Rica’s dreamy Playa Blanca, rich in white sand and wildlife, discover the world’s most breathtaking coastlines, riverbanks, and lakefronts in 100 Beaches of a Lifetime. Along with tried-and-true favorites, such Oregon’s Cannon Beach and Brazil’s Ipanema Beach, discover other noteworthy gems, including: Lake MacDonald, a colorful, picturesque lakefront in Glacier National Park Chesterman Beach, a surprising surf hub in British Columbia, Canada Mississippi’s Ship Island swim beach, on a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico Shell Beach, in Western Australia, a favorite for beachcombers Plage de Palombaggia, in Corsica, known for its beauty and crystal clear water Cape Maclear, a snorkeler’s paradise in Malawi … and many more!

In The Story of Scandinavia, political scholar Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture. Scandinavian history has been one of dramatic discontinuities of collapse and restarts, from the Viking Age to the Age of Perpetual War to the modern age today. For a thousand years, the Scandinavian countries were kingdoms of repression where monarchs played at the game of being European powers, at the expense of their own populations. The brand we now know as "Scandinavia" is a recent invention. During most of its history, Denmark and Sweden, and to some degree Norway, were bloody enemies. These sentiments of enmity have not been fully settled. Under the surface of collaboration remain undercurrents of hatred, envy, contempt and pity. What does it mean today to be Scandinavian? For the author, whose identity is Scandinavian but his life European, this masterly history is a personal exploration as well as a narrative of compelling scope.

A poetic meditation on life and death, by one of the most renowned and respected film-makers and intellectuals of our time. In November 1974, when Werner Herzog was told that his mentor Lotte Eisner, the film-maker and critic, was dying in Paris, he set off to walk there from Munich, 'in full faith, believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot'. Along the way he recorded what he saw, how he felt, and what he experienced, from the physical discomfort of the journey to moments of rapture. It is a remarkable narrative - part pilgrimage, part meditation, and a confrontation between a great German Romantic imagination and the contemporary world. This edition of the book is being published for the first time as a classic piece of proto-psychogeography, to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the legendary director's walk.

From Amsterdam to Cambodia, from Rome to Indonesia, from New Orleans to Libya, and from Detroit to Ko Pha-Ngan, Geoff Dyer finds himself both floundering about in a sea of grievances and finding moments of transcendental calm. This aberrant quest for peak experiences leads, ultimately, to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where, to quote Tarkovsky's Stalker, 'your most cherished desire will come true'.

'A total joy' Laura Kay, author of The Split 'Hilarious and unexpectedly moving' Richard Roper, author of Something to Live For 'The perfect book for summer 2021' James Bailey, author of The Flip Side 'Brilliantly written, properly funny and poignant' Tom Ellen, author of All About Us 'A delightful and unique take on travel writing' Katy Wix, author of Delicacy The setting: Europe. A continent overrun by tourism, where tapas-crawlers cross paths with machine-gun-wielding cops, graffiti tour guides collide with anti-gentrification protestors and, in one classy mountain retreat, a bored patissier teaches mindful croissant-making to a bereaved luggage designer. Witness to this outlandish international spectacle is Mark, comically self-conscious and often thoroughly disturbed by modern life. In his 30s and working as a copywriter for an online travel company despite never having personally ventured further than France, Mark is determined to make up for lost time by embarking on the kind of freewheeling summer expedition he's always dreamed of. And even if his revered older cousin Paris is unable to join him on the trip, he's determined not to let that hold him back. Mark can always email the mysteriously absent Paris about the homes and experiences he has along the way, in intricate and often hilarious detail. Described by The Times as 'one of the finest comic minds of Generation Y', award-winning comedian Liam Williams brings his inimitable mix of humour and pathos to his unforgettable debut novel.

MEXICO CITY, with some 20 million inhabitants, is the largest city in the Western Hemisphere. Enormous growth, raging crime, and tumultuous politics have also made it one of the most feared and misunderstood. Yet in the past decade, the city has become a hot spot for international business, fashion, and art, and a magnet for thrill-seeking expats from around the world.
In 2002, Daniel Hernandez traveled to Mexico City, searching for his cultural roots. He encountered a city both chaotic and intoxicating, both underdeveloped and hypermodern. In 2007, after quitting a job, he moved back. With vivid, intimate storytelling, Hernandez visits slums populated by ex-punks; glittering, drug-fueled fashion parties; and pseudo-native rituals catering to new-age Mexicans. He takes readers into the world of youth subcultures, in a city where punk and emo stand for a whole way of life--and sometimes lead to rumbles on the streets.
Surrounded by volcanoes, earthquake-prone, and shrouded in smog, the city that Hernandez lovingly chronicles is a place of astounding manifestations of danger, desire, humor, and beauty, a surreal landscape of "cosmic violence." For those who care about one of the most electrifying cities on the planet, ""Down & Delirious in Mexico City "is essential reading" (David Lida, author of "First Stop in the New World").

Henrietta Lovell is best known as 'The Rare Tea Lady'. She is on a mission to revolutionise the way we drink tea by replacing industrially produced teabags with the highest quality tea leaves. Her quest has seen her travel to the Shire Highlands of Malawi, across the foothills of the Himalayas, and to hidden gardens in the Wuyi-Shan to source the world's most extraordinary teas.

Infused invites us to discover these remarkable places, introducing us to the individual growers and household name chefs Lovell has met along the way - and reveals the true pleasures of tea. The result is a delicious infusion of travel writing, memoir, recipes, and glorious photography, all written with Lovell's unique charm and wit.

Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015 Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When at last he comes home to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on Congo's south-eastern coast, he finds a country that in some ways has changed beyond recognition: the cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture has become a Pentecostal temple, and his secondary school has been re-named in honour of a previously despised colonial ruler. But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture which still informs everyday life in Pointe-Noire. Mabanckou though, now a decorated French-Congolese writer and esteemed professor at UCLA, finds he can only look on as an outsider at the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into the life of his departed mother and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to Congo, Mabanckou slowly builds a stirring exploration of the way home never leaves us, however long ago we left home.

Before The Perfect Storm, before In the Heart of the Sea, Steven Callahan’s dramatic tale of survival at sea was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than thirty-six weeks. In some ways the model for the new wave of adventure books, Adrift is an undeniable seafaring classic, a riveting firsthand account by the only man known to have survived more than a month alone at sea, fighting for his life in an inflatable raft after his small sloop capsized only six days out. “Utterly absorbing” (Newsweek), Adrift is a must-have for any adventure library.

In an Antique Land is a subversive history in the guise of a traveller's tale. When the author stumbles across a slave narrative in the margins of an ancient text, his curiosity is piqued. What follows is a ten year search, which brings author and slave together across 800 hundred years of colonial history. Bursting with anecdote and exuberant detail, it offers a magical, intimate biography of the private life of a country, Egypt, from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm.

Over the last two and a half years, Chris Tarrant has travelled, literally, all around the world filming Extreme Railway Journeys for Channel 5. The hugely successful TV series is already being repeated, and broadcast rights have been, and continue to be, picked up in other countries, while it is also being released on DVD. Chris's journeys have taken him to the Congo, India, Australia, Bolivia (twice), Japan, Siberia, Myanmar, Canada and Cuba, and the latest programmes see the completion of filming in Alaska, Argentina, Azerbaijan, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Chris Tarrant's Extreme Railway Journeys brings to life beautifully not only the romance of travelling by train, but also the sights, sounds and smells of the countries and places visited, while also illuminating the customs and attitudes of the people the author encountered along the way. But, as he says, 'I should have known what I was in for and what the word "extreme" means, when the very first show saw us filming in the Congo - where the train was six DAYS late.' Beautifully illustrated with exclusive colour photographs, Extreme Railway Journeys is not only a record of remarkable journeys in extraordinary places by one of our shrewdest commentators. It is also a demonstration of the principle that 'to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive'.

To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months--out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey--and explored an ancient world in modern ferment.

At the age of twenty-two, William Dalrymple left his college in Cambridge to travel to the ruins of Kublai Khan’s stately pleasure dome in Xanadu. This is an account of a quest which took him and his companions across the width of Asia, along dusty, forgotten roads, through villages and cities full of unexpected hospitality and wildly improbable escapades, to Coleridge’s Xanadu itself.
At once funny and knowledgeable, In Xanadu is in the finest tradition of British travel writing. Told with an exhilarating blend of eloquence, wit, poetry and delight, it is already established as a classic of its kind.

In 1897, two sisters embark from Pennsylvania in search of soul-broadening experiences in the Indian Southwest, newly opened to intrepid travellers. Their letters and photographs are the heart of this brilliantly reassembled grand tour.

The first of a set of 5 additions to the best selling Recollections series taking us on a nostalgic tour of Britain during the 1950s, 60s and 70s.Cedric Greenwood takes us on a photographic journey from Cornwall to Scotland with a wide selection of atmospheric shots taken during those three decades.Using the means of transport available including buses, trams, trains and ships we see the street scenes and life as it was back then.The fashions, the vehicles, the shops, the industries, the landscape and much, mich more frozen in the moment and captured by Cedric's camera for us to enjoy 40, 50, 60 years later!This first volume (No 70 in the Recollections series takes us to the centre of Britain covering Northamptonshire to Merseyside.

Perfect Camping for You in Montana! The new full color edition of Best Tent Camping: Montana, by Jan and Christina Nesset, is a guidebook for car campers who like quiet, scenic, and serene campsites, from the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness in the northwest to the Yellowstone River Valley in the south. This completely updated guidebook includes 50 private, state park, and state and national forest campgrounds divided into distinct regions; detailed campground maps; key information such as fees, restrictions, and dates of operation; driving directions; and ratings for beauty, privacy, spaciousness, security, and cleanliness. Whether you are a native Montanan in search of new territory or a vacationer on the lookout for that dream campground, this book by local outdoor adventurers Jan and Christina Nesset unlocks the secrets to the best tent camping Montana has to offer.

Well written and entertaining, A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor, describes the extensive travels of George William Featherstonhaugh in Wisconsin, Minnesota and various southern states in 1835 and 1837. Featherstonhaugh, an Englishman by birth, was a geologist by profession and well qualified to comment on the American scene. By the time of his travels in the 1830s, he had lived in the United States for nearly thirty years. He was also a linguist with an attentive ear for speech. In performing his duties as a geologist for the United States, he visited remote sections of the frontier that few other trained observers had yet an opportunity to see. In these two volumes Featherstonhaugh chronicles two separate expeditions--a geological expedition in 1835 of the area from Lake Michigan west to the Coteau des Prairies at the headwaters of the Minnesota River, and a tour in 1837 of the mineral lands of Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, and the western Carolinas.

More than half a century after his death, Winston Churchill, the most significant British statesman of the twentieth century, continues to intrigue us. Peter Clark's book, however, is not merely another Churchill biography. Churchill's Britain takes us on a geographical journey through Churchill's life, leading us in Churchill's footsteps through locations in Britain and Ireland that are tied to key aspects of his biography. Some are familiar-Blenheim Palace, where he was born; Chartwell, his beloved house in the country; and the Cabinet War Rooms, where he planned the campaigns of World War II. But we also are taken to his schools, his parliamentary constituencies, locations of famous speeches, the place where he started to paint, the tobacco shop where he bought his cigars, and the graves of his family and close friends. Clark brings us close to the statesman Churchill by visiting sites that were important to the story of his long life, from the site where his father proposed to his American mother on the Isle of Wight to his grave in a country churchyard in Oxfordshire. Designed as a gazetteer with helpful regional maps, Churchill's Britain can be dipped into, consulted by the traveler on a Churchill tour of Britain, or read straight through--and no matter how it's read, it will deliver fresh insights into this extraordinary man.

‘My idea of tackling one of the world’s most appalling maritime challenges is being able to stand up on a lilo.’

In 1856, the swashbuckling aristocrat Lord Dufferin sailed to Iceland and the Arctic Circle, an adventure that became a bestselling travelogue. A century and a half later, soft suburbanite Tim Moore tried to recreate the celebrated journey with a similar degree of pluck, dignity, and stiff upper lip.

Whilst Dufferin’s battle with icebergs and the elements is a tale of derring-do, Moore’s struggle against seasickness, a clan of Brummie Vikings and terrifying hallucinations involving Clive James is all too plainly one of derring-don’t. As Moore says, ‘Dufferin seems the personification of Kipling’s 'If'. I’m more of a 'But…' man myself.’
 

The seven volcanic Canary Islands that bask in the Atlantic off shore from the north-west African coast have long had legendary connotations. To the Greeks they were the Gardens of the Hesperides, blessed with a perennial spring-like climate, while the Carthaginians christened them the 'Purple Isles' on account of the rich dye material they obtained there. Inhabitants have ranged from the early Berber-descended Guanches, of whom cultural traces still remain, to the rich blend of European and Latin peoples that evolved after the Spanish conquest in the fifteenth-century. Famous visitors have included Columbus, Humboldt and General Franco, who famously flew from Gran Canaria in a (British-piloted) Dragon Rapide in 1936 to launch Spain's Civil War. In today's cosmopolitan capitals of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife Spanish colonial-era buildings merge with modern centres equipped with sophisticated amenities. For holidaymakers tiny ecologically-oriented havens like Gomera vie with big brash tourist resorts like Playa del Ingles and Playa de las Americas, today's major money-makers after the brief trade boom of yesteryear. Peter Stone explores the fascinating history and culture of this archipelago, where nature and geology provide a spectacular setting for today's tourism industry. FANTASY LANDSCAPE Bone dry 'badlands', orange-grey dunes, giant craters, frozen lava flows, black-sanded coves, rich green bananas plantations and sylvan woodlands shrouded in perennial mists all form part of this multi-faceted paradise. NATIONAL PARKS AND WILD LIFE Four of Spain's fifteen great national parks are located on the islands; Tenerife's 3,700-metre Teide, the country's highest mountain, is the most visited. Island fauna vary from the desert-like lizards of Lanzarote to the rich bird life of La Palma. UNIQUE LOCAL CULTURE Local fiestas abound and traditional dance and music exhibitions are held in cultural centres like Gran Canaria's Pueblo Canario. Mould-breaking Lanzarote architect Cesar Manrique has left a supreme legacy of innovative buildings and monuments.

In late 1910, three American adventurers set off on a remarkable around-the-world journey by automobile. Sponsored by the Hupp Motor Car Corporation, the trip was intended to publicize the durability of the Hupmobile and help stimulate export sales. The car was first driven from Detroit to San Francisco-a very difficult journey in its own right in 1910. From San Francisco, the car and its drivers took a steamship to Hawaii, and from there to Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, unloading and touring at each port of call. The men and their machine spent the next five weeks attempting to drive through the Philippines, and then pushed on to Japan and China, where they managed to stay one step ahead of the Chinese revolution. They then drove across India, and from there, sailed to Egypt, brining the first automobile ever to be seen in that country. Next, the Hupmobilists sailed to Italy. In Rome, the adventurers met Pope Pius X, and then drove north to Germany and France. They crossed the English Channel to Folkstone, toured England, and then ferried from Liverpool to Ireland. They returned to New York in time for the 1912 auto show. In the end, the Hupmobile was driven 41,000 miles and transported by steamship another 28,000. A new world was dawning, both for transportation and for American business enterprise.

**THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER** 'An inspirational study in leadership and a powerful testament to the human spirit at its very best.' - Mail on Sunday 'The energy of the book gives it pace and you whip through, rather as Purja nips up verticals... Whether or not you are a lover of the mountains, you will marvel at his tenacity, his fearlessness. No one can fail to be inspired by what he achieved.' - The Times 'Not only does Nims have exceptional physical stamina, he's also a leader with great skills in financial management and logistics.' - Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb all fourteen highest mountains in the world 'The magnitude of his achievement is astonishing.' Soldier Magazine 'A Living Legend.' Trail Magazine *** Welcome to The Death Zone. Fourteen mountains on Earth tower over 8,000 metres above sea level, an altitude where the brain and body withers and dies. Until recently, the world record for climbing them all stood at nearly eight years. So I announced I was summiting them in under seven months. People laughed. They told me I was crazy, even though I'd sharpened my climbing skills on the brutal Himalayan peaks of Everest and Dhaulagiri. But I possessed more than enough belief, strength and resilience to nail the job, having taken down enemy gunmen and terrorist bomb makers while serving with the Gurkhas and the UK Special Forces. Throughout 2019, I came alive in the death zone. Soon after, I was showing the world a new truth: that with bravery and enough heart and drive, the impossible was possible...